Sim Van der Ryn has been a leading proponent of the green building movement (even before it was known as that), and for more than a half a century has been leading the way to a more regenerative, resilient, and sustainable future. It is his hope that society will increasingly acknowledge the critical value to our health and well-being by our connection to nature, and that designing in collaboration with nature will become a major tool toward creating a vital new architecture for an empathic world. He has experienced a psychological condition in his students that is called nature deficit disorder. He says, “I’ve experienced it with Berkeley students in their 20s who, when we’re out in the forest or at the ocean, I could see were fearful. They’d never been in a natural environment…We are designed as humans to be part of nature and, if we paid attention to it, the architecture of the inner self tells us that.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bio

Sim Van der Ryn is an architect, author, and educator. He is President of the Ecological Design Collaborative and has, for over forty years, been at the forefront of integrating ecological principles into the built environment, creating multi-scale solutions driven by nature’s intelligence. He served as California’s first energy conscious state architect and is emeritus professor of architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley. He was founder of the Farallones Institute, now known as the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

Designing With Nature In Mind with Sim Van der Ryn

Sim Van der Ryn has been a leading proponent of the green building movement (even before it was known as that), and for more than a half a century has been leading the way to a more regenerative, resilient, and sustainable future. It is his hope that society will increasingly acknowledge the critical value to our health and well-being by our connection to nature, and that designing in collaboration with nature will become a major tool toward creating a vital new architecture for an empathic world. He has experienced a psychological condition in his students that is called nature deficit disorder. He says, “I’ve experienced it with Berkeley students in their 20s who, when we’re out in the forest or at the ocean, I could see were fearful. They’d never been in a natural environment…We are designed as humans to be part of nature and, if we paid attention to it, the architecture of the inner self tells us that.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bio

Sim Van der Ryn is an architect, author, and educator. He is President of the Ecological Design Collaborative and has, for over forty years, been at the forefront of integrating ecological principles into the built environment, creating multi-scale solutions driven by nature’s intelligence. He served as California’s first energy conscious state architect and is emeritus professor of architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley. He was founder of the Farallones Institute, now known as the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.